Dom Raso - The AR-15: Americans' Best Defense Against Terror and Crime

NRA News just released a new video commentary from former Navy SEAL Dom Raso. He launches into a very vigorous defense of the AR-15 as a self-defense weapon. I really like these couple of lines from his commentary:

AR-15s are fine for Hillary and her family. They've been protected by armed guards who use them for three decades. But average Americans who watch the news and feel genuine fear for their safety, and their families’ safety—Hillary wants to deny them the level of protection she insists upon herself.

The elites will always have protection, usually government-supplied, against threats from their enemies, domestic and foreign. As to the rest of us, we are, as Michael Bane and others have noted, on our own. That means you and I are our own first responders. Why should we be denied an easy to use, fairly lightweight, highly functional, medium-powered firearm that is rarely, if ever, used in criminal attacks just to appease the powerful and the ignorant?

The answer is we shouldn't.

Now That Chris Christie Is Out Of The Race, What Happens To This Guy?

When Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ) was seriously running for the Republican nomination for President, high profile cases involving New Jersey's unjust gun laws tended to bring clemency. In this latest case involving a Pennsylvania corrections officer who was hit by a drunk driver on his way home from Atlantic City, one has to wonder.

Ginny Simone, in a report for NRA News, discusses the case of Sgt. Ray Hughes who is facing felony charges.

"From Infamy To Victory"

This video which is part of the NRA's Frontline Series does an excellent job in showing how the United States went from the attack on Pearl Harbor to the signing of the surrender in Tokyo Bay. It is hosted by Ollie North.

Particularly poignant is the interview with Jiro Yakimura. Mr. Yakimura was a Nisei. That is, Mr. Yakimura was a natural born US citizen whose parents had immigrated from Japan. When Imperial Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, Mr. Yakimura was a college student in Hawaii and was a member of ROTC. In the days that followed, he and his fellow ROTC students were given a 1903 Springfield and sent to guard various spots on Oahu. Then, due to his Japanese ancestry, his services to his country were no longer needed. The story has a somewhat happy ending as Mr. Yakimura was finally able to serve his country as an officer in Army Intelligence in the Pacific.

NJ Gun Attorney Evan Nappen On The Pardon Of Steffon Josey-Davis

New Jersey attorney Evan Nappen, the man who wrote the book on that state's gun laws and who represented Steffon Josey-Davis, was on NRA News yesterday. He was interviewed by Cam Edwards regarding Gov. Chris Christie's complete and full pardon of Steffon. Nappen said the next step would be to go to court and get an expungement of the conviction from Steffon's record.

Nappen also discussed the recent murder of Carol Bowne who was still waiting for her gun permit to be approved when she was murdered by her ex-boyfriend.

Cornell University Says Kill The Townies

In the battle between town and gown, Cornell University is going after the townies and they want them killed.

You can relax a little. Cornell isn't trying to kill local Ithaca conservatives though it may have crossed the mind of some campus radicals. The Ithaca townies in this case are not the two legged variety but rather the four-legged cloven-hoofed variety with flashy white tails.

It seems that Cornell University is overrun with whitetail deer. You need to remember that Cornell is a weird hybrid in that it is both a liberal arts Ivy League school and a land-grant university with many test farms. It is this latter part of the campus that is the great attraction to the deer combining as it does food, shelter, and lack of predators.

According to a report by Professor William Jacobson at the Legal Insurrection, the university came up with a two-part plan to control the great numbers of deer attracted to its campus. In a move that would warm the cockles of Sandra Fluke's heart, on-campus deer are given free, permanent birth control. They got tubal ligations. Meanwhile, off-campus deer were subject to a controlled hunting program with emphasis on killing does.

The plan was an expensive failure as Professor Jacobson describes in this interview with Cam Edwards.

Potential Good News In The Shaneen Allen Case

The NRA News is reporting on Facebook that Atlantic County Prosecutor Jim McClain has requested a delay in Shaneen Allen's case while he reviews the appropriate resolution of the case.

BREAKING NEWS: The prosecutor in the Shaneen Allen case has requested her upcoming trial be delayed while he reviews the appropriate resolution of her case. Shaneen is the Philadelphia mother of two who became an unwitting victim of New Jersey's gun laws. Stay tuned for the exclusive interview with Ginny Simone and Shaneen's attorney Evan Nappen coming soon.

The interview by Ginny Simone and Cam Edwards with Shaneen Allen and her attorney Evan Nappen is below.



Hopefully, this will turn out well for Ms. Allen. She deserves something good to happen after all that she has lost due to the prosecutor's intransigence and New Jersey's utterly ridiculous laws.

"There Is No Justice For Gun Owners In New Jersey"

The headline, "there is no justice for gun owners in New Jersey", is a statement by Brian Aitken on the treatment that he and Shaneen Allen have received from that state's justice system. He is featured in a new NRA News Report by Ginny Simone entitled "Accidental Criminals: Brian Aitken is Living the Nightmare".

As both Aitken and Allen point out, if Ms. Allen had lied to the officer when stopped for the traffic violation in Atlantic County, New Jersey, she wouldn't be facing up to 10 or more years in prison for being an "accidental criminal". The judge in her case told her that telling the truth didn't matter in this case; it got her in trouble. Isn't incentivizing lying a perversion of any justice system?

Moreover, as Aitken points out, the gun laws of New Jersey are not meant to deter criminals but rather to deter honest citizens from actually owning firearms. Both judges and prosecutors want to use these "accidental criminals" as poster children for their goal of a disarmed public.

Every potential juror in Atlantic County should see this video along with Simone's earlier one on Shaneen Allen. If they understood the ramifications, they might just vote "not guilty" in the jury room. Her case is a strong argument for jury nullification.

Callling It Murder Or Calling It A Shooting - What's The Difference?

Does it matter if we call a violent act using a firearm that results in death a murder or a shooting?

It does according to this latest commentary from Dom Raso. Calling something a murder denotes the evil intent and focuses on the perpetrator of the crime. However, as the media is more likely to do, calling it a shooting focuses on the tool used and not the intent. The former is news while the latter is propaganda and allows the media to push its anti-gun agenda.

NRA News On Gun Runner Yee

You have to wonder if Sen. Leland Yee has a cool tong/triad nickname like Raymond Chow has in "Shrimp Boy". My suggestion is that he should now be know as Gun Runner Yee. That has a strong masculine ring to it and should fit in with his activities on behalf of Wo Hop To and the Hop Sing Boys.

Ginny Simone of NRA News takes a more serious approach to Gun Runner Yee than I do and interviews the NRA's longtime attorney in California, Chuck Michel, regarding his arrest.

"Just Say No To Firearm Ignorance" - Billy Johnson

Billy Johnson is one of the newer commentators for NRA News and I think he is one of the best. In a commentary released last week, he examined how communities respond to the accidental death of children. On the one hand you have accidental drownings and on the other you have accidental deaths involving firearms. Which do you think is responsible for more deaths of children under the age of 15? If you answered drownings you would be correct. A child is 12 times more likely to drown than to die from an accident involving a firearm according to CDC statistics.

Billy noted in his small community in Michigan they had an accidental drowning last year. The community responded with programs for better education and more water safety measures. They didn't ban water sports, they didn't move to close the Great Lakes, and they didn't want to create Swim Free Zones. The community devoted time, money, and education to help handle the problem of water safety. They believe it is a community's responsibility to make sure all kids know how to swim.

The question Billy asks is why is the response to accidental gun deaths not the same as for drownings.

"When Did We Set Usage Requirements On Our Rights?"

In his latest commentary for NRA News, Billy Johnson takes apart the argument propagated by the New York Times and the gun prohibitionists that a so-called declining gun ownership rate in America is grounds for imposing more gun control. The New York Times is basing its argument that gun ownership has declined from 49% to 34% over the past 30 years on a survey conducted by the University of Chicago.

This decline in self-reported gun ownership comes in the face of all-time high gun sales. The University of Chicago's 2012 General Social Survey results are contradicted by other surveys. As Billy points out, many gun owners are not going to tell a survey taker that they own guns and will lie about it if asked.

Even if the survey results accurately reflect the level of gun ownership in America it is irrelevant: constitutional rights do not come with usage requirements.

Marty Daniels - "Maybe I Should Throw The Challenge Flag"

Marty Daniels of Daniels Defense talked with Cam Edwards yesterday about the NFL's rejection of the Daniels Defense Superbowl ad.

Daniels discussed how they approached the Fox affiliate in Atlanta about running their ad during the Superbowl and how the NFL responded with an unequivocal no even after Daniels offered to remove the company's log. He noted that the local NBC affiliate in Georgia ran their ad during last year's Superbowl with some hesitancy but they ran it.

Daniels says he is a bit amazed at the response the NFL's rejection of his company's ad has generated. He has heard from a number of people who are outraged at the sheer hypocrisy of the NFL and wonder what happened to their country.

He concludes with a bit of humor saying maybe he ought to throw the challenge flag and ask the NFL to review the "ruling on the field".





Lest it be forgotten, the NFL allowed ads from Mayor Bloomberg's Illegal Mayors during the 2012 and 2013 Superbowls.

The Logic Of Violence

Billy Johnson is one of the newer NRA News commentators. He is also, in my opinion, one of the more erudite and cerebral of their commentators. His latest commentary discusses the logic of violence.

The public and policy makers clamor for an end to violence. Unfortunately, they usually focus on a tool used in the commission of a violent act. That tool is a firearm. By focusing so much on the tool, the root cause of the problem is never defined nor understood.

Johnson says that most violence has a logic to it. That logic could be the use of violence to achieve social standing as in a gang dominant culture or it could be the use of violence to achieve immediate celebrity and infamy as in rampage murder. By understanding the logic of violence, Johnson contends we could use that knowledge as a tool to reduce violence.

Watch the video and then watch it again. It is not a flip or breezy video about the stupidity of the gun prohibitionists. Rather it is an intellectual argument that forces you to think. Armed with this knowledge, we can make a better argument of the ways to reduce violence in our society and in our streets.

Colion Noir on "Gun Safety"

Colion Noir, in his latest commentary for NRA News, takes on one of my pet peeves. That is, the renaming of gun control and confiscation as gun safety (sic) by the gun prohibitionists, the mainstream media, and the White House. If they want to talk about gun safety, they need to be talking about Colonel Cooper's Four Rules.

Proposals for universal background checks, a new assault weapon (sic) ban, and magazine bans have nothing to do with actual gun safety. When the gun prohibitionists use the term "gun safety" they have the same intent as when they used the term "gun control".

As Colion Noir says, thinking that all they have to do is change the name shows they have the same amount of respect for us that they do for the Second Amendment. In other words, none.

Natalie Foster - "Profit"

Natalie Foster dissects the "greedy gun company" myth in her latest NRA News Commentary video. She discusses how uninformed people might be taken in by the gun prohibitionists' claim that gun companies only care about the bottom line and don't care about people or safety.

Of course, as Natalie notes, gun companies don't put profit over safety. Moreover, most gun companies are family run companies and that these companies care about their customers.





As I've said many times, the move by NRA News to offer viewpoints from younger commentators such as Natalie and ColionNoir is a smart one. It shows that the gun culture is not a monolithic culture made up of old redneck white guys. That stereotype might work for some markets but it is a myth and these videos effectively challenge it.

Authentic

What do Austin Weiss, Colion Noir, Natalie Foster, Dom Raso, and Billy Johnson have in common?

The first two things are obvious: they are all commentators for NRA News and they all love guns.

The third thing is that they are all authentic. They are who they are. Just as Colion Noir is urban and hip so Natalie Foster is girly and fashionable. This authenticity was brought home to me yesterday while listening to the newest contributor Austin Weiss.

Austin is a car guy who with his beard (and tats) would have looked at home on the Boston Red Sox. His cars blend new technology with old style chrome. His guns are the same blending the old and the new. In the video below, Austin mentions how his over-and-under shotgun has carbon fiber stocks instead of nice walnut. He notes the false dichotomy that the O/U with wood stocks says hunting while his with the carbon fiber stocks are "killing machines". He calls this terrible and a misconception.

Say what you will about the NRA and the "lairds of Fairfax", somewhere amidst all those stodgy old white guys is someone who gets it and is working hard to reach out to Gun Culture v.2.0. And you know that this has to piss off the Ladds, Sarahs, and Joshes of the gun prohibitionist industry.

Outdated?

As Colion Noir points out in his latest commentary for NRA News, the notion that the Second Amendment is "outdated" and should be replaced by 2A v.2.0 is laughable. Even if we don't "need" to hunt for our food nowadays, there are still two-legged predators who stand ready to deprive you and me of both our property and our lives.

Billy Johnson - NRA News' Newest Commentator

NRA News has added a new face to their stable of commentators. Joining Colion Noir, Dom Raso, and Natalie Foster is Billy Johnson. His goal is to get people to start looking at things and events in a different way. He has a YouTube channel called AmidsTheNoise.

In his first video for NRA News, Billy argues that policymakers have a mistaken focus on the tools of violence rather than the logic of violence. An example of this would be gang leaders. They got to be gang leaders by using violence to show that they were the meanest and baddest. Whether they used a Glock, a switchblade, or their fists to kill or maim their rivals is not the issue. The issue is that they were willing to use violence to achieve their aims.

Likewise rewarding social outcasts with instant celebrity or infamy after incidents like Aurora or Tucson has the effect of rewarding violence - even in mainstream society.

I look forward to more of Billy's commentaries. I have embedded his first one below.

Ginny Simone On The Colorado Recall Elections

In the piece below from Ginny Simone of NRA News, you can hear the grassroots activists like Victor Head of Pueblo Freedom and Rights explain what they did on Tuesday. They organized, they worked, and they overcame a tidal wave of outside money to recall two state senators who not only ignored the wishes of their constituents but didn't even want to hear them.





If you want to hear more from the organizers of the recall, listen to Shooter Ready Radio this afternoon/evening. I know a number of the organizers will be guests on the program. You can listen live on the radio as well as the internet. Details are here.

Tomorrow Is The Day

While the recall elections in Colorado Springs and Pueblo are actually under way, tomorrow is the official election day. It will be the day where the rest of America will see if Bloomberg can successfully buy the legislatures of western states to further his anti-gun jihad and whether there will be any accountability for those legislators who traded the Constitution for money.

Ginny Simone reports for in a special for NRA News on the recall elections. She has interviews with many of the average guys who said enough was enough. People like Victor Head of Pueblo who is a plumber and Rob Harris of Colorado Springs along with El Paso County Sheriff Terry Maketa who is a plaintiff in the Federal lawsuit against the new gun laws.